Monday, September 17, 2012

Arrival at camp

The view at Kavik around midnight

After a night of camping at Kavik
we woke up and awaited the weather report to see if the fog had cleared at the
Canning. A couple hours passed before we finally had enough visibility to head
out, but once we got the go-ahead – we were soon on our way.

A relatively quick ~30 mile flight
later, and we were there. We dropped down through a hole in the fogbank and
flew under the low cloud layer, a few hundred feet off the ground. Among the stark
white landscape the pilot picked out our landing location – a frozen lake about
a kilometer from our soon-to-be camp.

Upon landing we were struck by the
desolation of the location for early June – with the entire land being enshrouded
with snow and ice as far as the eye could see, with only small mounds of brown
earth poking up here and there - an amazing contrast from the Kavik landscape only 30 miles away.

The view when we landed. Camp can be seen on the right side of the photo.

The rest of the day was filled with
transporting all of our gear from the landing site to camp, and setting up the
weather station and tents. Like most of the days there in the first couple
weeks, it was windy, cold, overcast, and usually foggy. Quite a scene for June!

Setting up the weather station. The bathroom is on the left, the cook and mess tents are on the right.

Alan walking from the mess/book tent compound to the sleeping tents. The yellow wire in the front is our bear fence, a solar-powered electric deterrent.

It was probably the most challenging walking in these first couple days, due to the slush and snow most places, but it made it so much easier to carry things in sleds. The blue sled pictured above was what we used to transport all of our food, propane, guns, personal gear, and every piece of equipment, all dragged a kilometer (0.6 miles). Every single thing that we brought in had to be brought out, even solid waste!